Christians, Hell, Preaching and Love

If you don't know already, I have a few novels under the name K.J.Ester, in the Fantasy genre, collectively called "The Demon Siege Trilogy". They got good reviews but not enough readers ever find them. They are about the demons of the underworld on the verge of destroying the human race. The angels, finding themselves for the first time on the precipice of losing the war, turn to a few human warriors to help their cause. In my second book in the trilogy, I start it off a little different than the others. The first chapter takes place in hell, with one particular demon, Arkaix, watching the lost souls being tortured. Its quite dark to be honest. This is the first few paragraphs...

Arkaix watched across the ocean of fire at the millions of souls being tortured. Demons were having their usual fun, tearing at the fabric of those lost souls, filling them with excruciating pain and feeding them with fear. Their screams were like music to his ears, and he smiled as he considered what each of those souls were going through. Darkness, so pitch they could not see the demons rending their spiritual bodies. The endless forest of black fire in which they suffered was of flames that gave off no light; for light was not allowed in Hell. They could feel the claws and fangs of the demons as their souls were raked and bitten, but they could not see what was causing such excruciating pain. The small intervals of time when no demon was torturing a particular soul, it spent those few seconds in fear of when the next strike would happen. The only sounds they could hear were those of other tortured souls, weeping in fear or screaming in their torment; an unending suffering of pain. For the most part, their own wails of agony drowned out the sounds of all others. Laced within the anguish and the fear, was the scent of sulfur. The worst of their suffering was that each of them knew, full well, it would never end. Their souls would be in agony for the rest of eternity. Those ridiculous human beings are so stupid! Arkaix thought. They always believe they will not end up here.Most humans do not even believe there is a Hell. Arkaix’s smile deepened as he thought on it. What they believe does not matter.The truth is the truth, and whether they do not believe Hell is real, or not, they end up here for the demons to play with anyway.The smile slowly faded from Arkaix’s face. It was a fleeting pleasure for him to torture the countless souls. It was something he did to pass time. He did not enjoy it so much as he once did. He preferred to be out in the world of the living, turning the worthless humans against each other. Turning them away from that self-righteous God, that kicked him out of Paradise!

I wrote this several years ago. At the time, I was like one of those souls being tortured. I believed in God. I knew hell was real, but I didn't know how real it was. What I wrote was my own belief of what hell would be like. About a year ago, my life changed. God opened my eyes. God led me to a Christian who introduced me to a book called "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" and it made me realize how real God and Jesus really is. That got me to not only start reading the Bible, but to start studying a lot of different things in the Bible. At one point it led me to start reading more on Revelation and in that book, I learned something. My view of hell was wrong. I realized I had something very wrong about my vision of hell. I learned that the demons will not be torturing our souls as I believed. You see, I had always thought of the verses in the Bible where Jesus says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, that he was saying there would be demons practically biting and tearing at our souls with their fangs. Then I read Revelation and realized that my image of hell with demons torturing our souls was in reality, too timid. Hell is not a place where our souls will be tortured by demons. It is much worse than that. Revelation showed me that hell is a place where Satan himself would be tortured for all eternity! Think about that. The most evil being in the universe. The one who will possess the antichrist in the end days. The one who was so powerful that he believed he could stand up against God. Hell is such a bad place that it was where the devil himself would be thrown to spend eternity in agony! If hell is so bad to make Satan suffer in agony, what do you think it will be like for us? Now you may be thinking I am writing all of this just to throw the old "You're going to burn in hell if you don't straighten up!" bit at you. That's not why I wrote this. I wrote this for a completely different point. I want you to understand what true Christians believe. Christians don't mean to shove the Bible down your throat. It's not like they found a cool book and are trying to convince you Harry Potter is the best thing in the world to read. We actually believe that hell is real! We believe it as much as we believe we live on Earth. Its not that we are afraid of hell or that we are obsessed by it. We don't have dark demented minds... I say this with a straight face after posting the portion of my book above.... but because we do believe this hell is real, we worry about those we love going there. Try to see it this way. IF your child was playing in the street and you saw a truck swerving out of control coming down the road, wouldn't you do absolutely anything, including risking your own life, to save your child? If your spouse or parent was doing something that would sooner or later lead to certain death, no "ifs" "ands" or "buts" about it, wouldn't you try to convince them to not do it? We Christians believe that many of the people we love the most will someday end up in that dark hell we believe is so real. If we truly believe hell is real, we would be wrong to not try to show them how to be saved from it. I mean, how cold-hearted would we have to be to truly believe hell is real, and not care if our loved ones ended up there? Would you not care? Christians do not wish to control anyone. We do not want to push hatred on anyone. We don't want to annoy people. We just care about people, but we don't only care about their lives here on Earth. We care about their lives after they die. Why? Because that life is a hell of a lot longer than the ones we live on Earth. If you are really lucky you can live to be 100 years old on Earth. After you die, you will either go to heaven or hell and after you have lived that life for one hundred billions times longer than the one you spend on Earth, it will still only be a blink of an eye for how much longer you will have. We just don't want people we care about to spend all that in agony and darkness. If that sounds like a too dark and demented way of thinking for you, let me put it this way. We love you enough to want you to spend that ever ongoing eternity in a place of love and compassion and joy. Always being happy because there is no evil around anymore. That's what we want for you. That's why we talk about God so much. Think about that. Let that sink in. When you talk bad about a Christian for their beliefs, you are talking that way about the one person who truly cares about you enough to think about your soul.

***NOTE*** As a warning, if you choose to read those books, they are not Christian books. I mixed in a little of what I believed about the spirit world to add to the story, while trying to make them books the world would read. The books are on the dark side and can be quite violent and descriptive.